Khaleesi, 6, a passport was denied — with officials telling her she needed Warner Brothers’ approval because it owns the name’s trademark.
Typical capitalist brain rot.
Shouldn't they also use the same bullshit excuse when issuing an ID card? At least make the dumb rules consistent.
By this logic, everyone named Mickey should be paying Disney a royalty...
Wait shit retract delete delete DISNEY I DID JOT SAY ANYTHING DONT GET ANY FUCKING IDEAS NOW.
Mickey is a real name, though. It wasn't invented by Disney.
Not that their lawyers would care lmao
The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error.
They screwed up, and have admitted they screwed up. Did nobody read the article?
Does the WB even own that trademark? You have to manually apply for each one. Also, trademarks are specific to commercial operations and two companies are allowed to share if they aren't in the same business. I don't think trademark laws even apply here.
The idiocy of naming your kid Khaleesi aside, the UK just decided that a corporation can own your name and prevent you from enjoying the rights of your citizenship.
That's pretty fucked.
Edit - Apparently they did backtrack. But it's still amazing that anyone even thought that was a thing.
Khaleesi is a nice name aside from the fact that I think it's a title...
Khaleesi is a title, not a name. In the fictional world of "Game of Thrones," it means "queen" in the Dothraki language and is given to the wife of a Khal, the leader of a Dothraki tribe. The character Daenerys Targaryen is often referred to as Khaleesi. - chat gpt
Ya... It's a title.
I've had students named Happy, Classic, Diamonds, Epiphany, Scorpio, you name it. I wouldn't even cock my head to the side with a Khaleesi on my roll sheet at this point.
The idiocy of naming your kid Khaleesi aside
It's nice sounding as a name though, I wouldn't be in a rush to condemn someone for it. Now when it's the 5th "unique" spelling of Madison that starts to get a little ridiculous.
The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error.
No, they can't. That's not how copyright works. Read the damn article.
But how can I be outraged then?
I am glad to hear they're not officially taking corporate feudalism for a ride.
It seems that there is only two restrictions in the UK on naming a child at birth. That is that it must fit on a single line on the birth certificate and not contain numeric characters except things like ii to refer to the second.
If you want to change your name later in life there is a lot of restrictions but as far as I know copyright enforcement is still not one. You can find a list here if you are interested.
So, they passport office is concerned that WB won't approve? ffs.
Right? Like did she have to ask WB for permission to name her kid Khaleesi? Of course not! It's a kid's name not a spin off series lol
The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error. While officials said they’d now be able to process little Khaleesi’s passport, Lucy said she believes the problem was only solved because she complained on social media.
Sounds like the passport office didn't understand how trademark works.
Doubt the "whole office" was even involved. More likely it was one incompetent employee. We've all been there. It depends on who answers your call as to what answer you get.
Yup. This is the boring but likely true response. You get the one Gareth/Dwight who remembers that memo about not using trademarks in marketing materials and decides they know how this all works and that the rights of Warner Brothers have to be respected before putting their intellectual property on a published document. "Just get the appropriate permission on corporate letterhead and notarized, and this will all be fine."
Social media is one way to fix it, but I tend to think a couple of layers of escalation would have worked as well, if a bit more slowly.
“I never thought you could trademark a name,” she added.
I hope my son Marvel's The Amazing Spider-Man is not going to get in trouble.
If not, he can hang in trademark prison with Chalupa Batman.
This is their fault for not checking the username db first. Should've tried xXx_khaleesi_xXx instead
the initial application to get her daughter, Khaleesi, 6, a passport was denied — with officials telling her she needed Warner Brothers’ approval because it owns the name’s trademark.
This is a lot dumber than I thought. Yes, Khaleesi is a stupid name but it is their official name on government papers. They're seriously telling her "your daughter can't use her legal name without permission from Warner Brothers"?
As the article states this is bullshit and who knows what the person who denied her passport was thinking.
I've met someone whose legal name was Pepsi and she was able to get regular government documents without contacting PepsiCo.
It's unfortunate this mom had to go to a lawyer for this crap.
I don't understand why the Passport Office would have even looked.
People in this thread frothing at the mouth because it's a title, not a name, must have forgotten about Caesar. And that it doesn't matter - people call their kids all kinds of weird shit.
You mean Gaius Julius Caesar? Caesar was his last name, aka family name.
His family name was Julius (because he was from the family of the Iulii). Caesar was a title and since Augustus became part of the name when the position was taken up.
Caesar was a title
Caesar became a title after the collapse of the Republic, largely because the Augustine line carried it forward as proof of legitimacy. There was no position of "Caeser" within the Roman Republic, just a family name dating back to Julius Caeser's great-grandfather.
Well, technically both Julius and Caesar were his last names, Caesar was an extra name of unknown origin in his family branch. Since him it became a title.
What's wrong with passport offices? Here in the states I tried to get my passport in my teen years. I filled all the paperwork paid for it and everything when it came time to get the passport they were just like"you don't exist your social security number isn't real" and that's b******* since my mom had been literally filing taxes with that number as a dependent my entire life. The passport office said tough s*** fax me all your ID information maybe we can do something. So I literally hooked up a fax machine in 2014 and sent everything off but still nothing.
Tl;Dr US passport office told me I'm not a person and took my money anyway.
A. Call your Congress critter. Part of their job is tracking stuff like this down.
B. Go check with SSA immediately. That can be a big problem later.
This is what congress people are for.
In case anyone else wanted to save a click, daughters name is Khaleesi and it was denied because “Warner brothers trademark”
The people involved with this bullshit should be sacked. Typical power-tripping idiots.
Can't see anything wrong with calling your child after your favorite character
I'm just glad the parents named her that before the last season of GOT released.
Otherwise it would be even more concerning.
Khaleesi
I fully expected her to be named "Reek".
Hodor was my bet
This doesn't make any sense. UPS has trademarked the colour brown, yet I've known people with the last name Brown who have been able to get passports.
I feel like Game of Thrones could have had Harry Potter levels of cultural staying power if they didn't completely fuck the ending.
1a. Folks, before you name your children, don't make it easy for the big corporations to sue you. Those who "own" (i.e. use the government to suppress your right to free speech) a conlang, be it Dothraki, Klingon, or Tolkien's language care far more about profit than culture.
In 2012, 146 newborn girls in the United States were named "Khaleesi", the Dothraki term for the wife of a khal or ruler, and the title adopted in the series by Daenerys Targaryen.[3]
3c. wt:kalisi
Noun
kalisi (n class, plural kalisi)
Alternative form of kalisiamu
Etymology
Borrowed from English calcium.
Folks, before you name your children, don’t make it easy for the big corporations to sue you. Those who “own” (i.e. use the government to suppress your right to free speech) a conlang, be it Dothraki, Klingon, or Tolkien’s language care far more about profit than culture.
Fuck that. My kids have what most people would consider fairly common names, but I'll name them what I damn well please, and the very last thing I'm going to give a shit about is what some corpo thinks of it.
is there a court precedent for this? definitely not first child to be named after trademarked word
Weren't a lot of kids name that when that show came out?
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